Abstract:

PCR-RFLP was applied to analyze the polymorphism of MSTN gene UTR in 345 sheep that comprised of eleven sheep breeds, namely Texel sheep, Charolais sheep, Small-tailed Han sheep, Monggolian sheep, Ujumqin sheep, Altay Fat-rumped sheep, Hulunbeir sheep, Tashikurgan sheep, Duolang sheep, Hu sheep, and Gangba sheep. A 271 bp and a 1 003 bp long PCR products were digested with MboⅡand BsaⅠto demonstrate polymorphism in the eleven sheep breeds, which were all at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P>0.05). The distribution of 3 genotypes in 11 sheep breeds was significantly different (P<0.01). Digestion of the PCR products with HpyCH4Ⅳ proved that 9 domestic local sheep breeds were different from Texel sheep in the SNP site that was associated with muscularity. The individual mutation base could gener-ate the motifs for miRNA in the 3′UTR, and sequencing analysis demonstrated high frequency of mutation in the 3′UTR region.